Fabulous Creature

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  “Diane got this beauty when she was only thirteen years old,” Jarrett was going on. “Handled herself like a veteran. I started her out on a twenty-two when she wasn’t much more than a baby, and she took to it like a duck to water. A real natural with firearms, this girl.”

  Diane pantomimed a two-fisted quick draw and ka-pow at her father’s back, and James looked away quickly to keep from grinning.

  Mr. Jarrett was pointing up at a head with exceptionally large antlers. “My own personal record is this old bruiser,” he said. “Nailed him just a few miles from here five years ago. Just look at that spread. That’s almost twenty-five inches. And eight points is very unusual in this day and age, let me tell you.”

  James counted the points. He was quite sure his stag had a lot more although he’d never actually counted them, not realizing the precise number was of any special significance. Right about then he was distracted by a particularly intimate poke from Diane, and while he was still trying to recover, the phone rang. Hank Jarrett excused himself and hurried upstairs.

  Diane sat down on one of the leather couches, and James collapsed beside her. She was sitting with her feet tucked under her and her back held very straight, so that the print on the front of her tee shirt was very prominent—and only inches away from his shoulder. Today her shirt was blue with large black print that said, “Don’t Touch Me.”

  “Let’s see,” she giggled. “Where were we when we were so rudely interrupted?”

  “Well,” James said, “you had your bag behind you, and I was trying to get it.”

  “Like this?” She put both hands behind her back, which further accentuated the topography under the printed message. James leaned toward her and put both hands around to where the bag had been, which of course resulted in pressing his own chest against the message and bringing his lips to within a couple of inches of hers. For the space of two or three very pronounced heartbeats, he waited to see if she was going to pull away, but she didn’t, and a moment later he leaned a little more and their lips touched. Her lips were warm and soft and a little bit moist and they moved a little under his. It was very electrifying, and it would have been even more so if he hadn’t been slightly distracted by wondering if he was doing it right and if she could tell that he hadn’t done it very often.

  After a few seconds she pulled away. But she didn’t pull very far away, and unlike Heather Rubenstein, she didn’t ask him why he had wanted to do that. Instead she only smiled at him in that half-teasing, half-inviting way, and he was just leaning forward again when he became aware of a very disturbing noise: whirr-thud, whirr-thud, whirr-thud. It sounded a lot like a golf ball rolling down stairs, and unfortunately that was exactly what it turned out to be. The ball reached the floor and rolled across the room into a corner, and a moment later Jacky came into view at the turn of the stairs. James got up quickly and went to stand with his back to a wall. Diane stayed on the couch, but she turned so that she was able to keep her eyes on her brother, too. Jacky followed the ball into the corner, picked it up and came back across the room. He stared at James, and James stared back. The frown was familiar.

  “You’d better come back over here,” Diane said. “If he misses you there, he might hit the picture window.”

  “Don’t worry,” James said. “I doubt if he’ll miss.”

  But Jacky seemed to be in a particularly benevolent mood. After glaring at James for several seconds, he toddled over and glared at Diane, all the time passing the golf ball back and forth between his fat little hands, but not making any attempt to throw it. He had turned around and was headed back toward the stairs when he suddenly detoured toward Diane’s beach bag, snatched out her bathing suit and increased his pace to a trot. Diane leaped to her feet and over the back of the couch in one swift, sinuous movement, raced after Jacky and snatched the suit away. Even then, although Jacky cocked his arm at her, he didn’t actually throw the ball. Instead he only stomped up the stairs, turning to glare down at them every few steps.

  Diane put her suit back in the bag and put it on top of the wet bar. “Yesterday he flushed one of my suits down the toilet,” she said. “The little creep.”

  “I hope it wasn’t the pink one,” James said. “I really like that one.”

  “Do you?” She made her eyes innocently round as if she couldn’t imagine why anyone would notice her in a few old scraps of silky pink. “No. It wasn’t that one.” She sat back and patted the couch beside her. James was on his way toward her when the golf ball started down the stairs again. That was the way things went for the next half-hour. Just when things began to get interesting, the golf ball would start down the stairs, followed by Jacky. The mood was pretty much spoiled because, even though Diane seemed to be able to ignore Jacky’s presence, at times James found that he couldn’t. It was impossible to concentrate on what was in front of him—even when it was Diane—when the back of him was expecting to be golf-balled at any moment. At last Diane got up off the couch and said impatiently, “Look. I’m starving. Why don’t we go upstairs and get something to eat.”

  But there were problems upstairs, too. In a little room just off the kitchen, which seemed to be a kind of office, Hank Jarrett was still on the phone and sounding disconcertingly threatening. All the time Diane was getting out various kinds of edibles, her father’s voice was bouncing off the quarry tiles and double-glazed windows and echoing back from the interiors of the rustic cabinets. Under cover of the roar, Diane asked, “Want some chips?”

  “Sure. Thanks.” Charlotte, who had a thing about empty calories, wouldn’t approve, but if they’d done Diane any physical damage, it surely wasn’t evident.

  “—and tell that fathead Meyer, I’m prepared to sue his ass off—” echoed around them as they nibbled on potato chips and stared into each other’s eyes. “Cheese bits?” Diane whispered.

  “Why not?” James whispered back.

  “And Steve. You get that information to Dunc before you go home. You hear me. It has to be today. Keep calling the office, and try the club. Try the goddamn club every fifteen minutes.”

  “He’s talking to his lawyer,” Diane said. “He usually yells when he’s talking to his lawyer.”

  It didn’t seem to bother Diane at all, but James found the whole scene a little unnerving. When Hank Jarrett finally came out of his office, his expression seemed strangely familiar. James found himself checking for a golf ball. Of course, there wasn’t any, but James decided not to risk outstaying his welcome, anyway. So he thanked Diane and Mr. Jarrett for their hospitality and headed for home.

  Diane walked with him to the end of the drive. When they got to the road, she stopped and leaned back against a tree—on the side away from the house. That time the kiss lasted a long time.

  On the way home James made two important decisions. The first one was that he was probably in love, and the second one was that he was going to stop telling Max about Diane. At least he was going to stop telling him everything. It had been all right to make humorous daily reports when the whole thing had been only a part of the Don Juan Project—but now that his relationship with Diane had turned into something much more significant, the reports would have to end.

  Thinking back over the letter he’d written to Max after he first met Diane that day on the beach, and even the one he’d written only last night, he felt a little bit disloyal. The thing was he’d been a bit sarcastic about Diane’s enthusiasm for guns and hunting. In fact, he’d actually gone so far as to make a crack about dangerous romances and how he was developing a fellow feeling for the males of certain other species, such as the black widow spider, doomed by their biological urges to lethal pursuits. He saw now that the crack had probably been very unfair. Of course, a fifteen-year-old girl would be enthusiastic about hunting if she’d been reared by a hunting family. She probably just hadn’t gotten around to thinking the whole thing through for herself yet. He’d have to discuss it with her a bit more. Possibly point out some of the irrational ideas conn
ected with it. And in the meantime he would simply write to Max and tell him that he didn’t feel it was right to be humorous at the expense of a very significant long-term relationship.

  The next afternoon, when he called Diane from the booth outside the snack bar, she said, “Oh, I don’t think you’d better come up now. We’re awfully busy getting ready to go to Sacramento. We’re leaving tomorrow, you know.”

  “Tomorrow. For Sacramento,” James said, aghast.

  Diane giggled. “Don’t take it so hard,” she said. “It’s only for a week. We were going to go in a couple of days anyway, because of the swimming meet, but now Dad says he has to be there sooner because of some trouble with a planning commission or something. But we’ll be back next week. I’ll see you then, okay.”

  “Do you have to go?” James asked.

  “It’s a very important meet. We’re all going. Our whole family and my aunt. My Uncle Duncan is going to be one of the judges. He’s already in Sacramento, and the rest of us are flying down tomorrow. See you next week. Okay?”

  “Sure,” James said. “See you next week.” He hung up the phone and went into the snack bar to drown his troubles in a Dr. Pepper.

  CHAPTER 5

  AS HE APPROACHED the entrance to the hidden valley, he became aware of an anxious, almost guilty feeling. He had not been there for more than a week, had not in fact given the valley and its magnificent occupant more than a few minutes thought. But now, as he made his way down the steep incline into the canyon, he suddenly identified his vague discomfort as being related to guilt.

  How could he have forgotten so quickly and completely the thrill he had felt when, after days of quiet observation, he had realized that the deer had been aware of and accepted his presence. And now, after his week-long desertion, would he still be tolerated? Or would the valley be deserted, the deer gone forever? Increasing his pace, he slipped and slid down the last stretch of loose shale to the valley floor.

  There was no sign of the stag in the first small grove, nor in the clearing; but in the heavy stand of fir near the spring, James came suddenly upon him. Although he bounded to his feet at James’ approach, he stood his ground, his head held high, his delicate black muzzle twitching as he tested the air. Closer now than ever before, James could clearly see the caplike patch on his forehead and how the massive antlers, which had seemed only dark and heavy from a distance, were actually covered with what looked like gray-brown suede. Sweeping up and out to almost twice the width of his body, the antlers branched and rebranched into six separate points on each side. Twelve prongs in all.

  An unpleasant association twitched at the back of James’ mind—a sea of sad dead eyes in a forest of antlers. Irrationally, the twinge of guilt returned, as if the lustrous living eyes of the stag could look into his mind and see it too: the long wall hung with the remains of so many of his kind. like him and yet—not really like. With a thrill of some unnameable excitement, James realized that there was nothing on the wall in the Jarrett’s trophy room—not even the head that Jarrett had presented as his own personal record—that came even close in size and symmetry. This stag was obviously one in a million. A wise and noble prince of the forest.

  Digging into his pockets, James took out an apple and several slices of bread. He put them on the ground and backed away slowly and carefully, taking care not to make any sudden sound or movement. He hadn’t gone far when the deer moved forward to accept his offering.

  The apple went first and then the bread. The deer chewed calmly, his lower jaw working from side to side. Between bites he regarded James thoughtfully. He was still watchful, but obviously less wary and suspicious. When the last scrap was gone, he turned with calm dignity and retreated into the shadows of the grove.

  James went back then to his favorite observation post on the flat-topped boulder. For almost an hour he sat quietly absorbing the ongoing dramas of the wilderness community, the teeming life of what might seem at first glance to be a deserted valley—the naively joyous energy of large families of birds, the timid bravado of chipmunk rivals and the constant half-seen, half-sensed, life and death scurry of the tiny, many-legged things beneath the grasses of the valley floor. He was lying on his stomach with his head hanging over the edge of the boulder watching a small army of ants attacking an enormous beetle when some mysterious sensing, not connected to ears or eyes, told him to raise his head.

  The stag had returned. No more than fifty feet from the boulder he stopped, looked in James’ direction and then, lowering his head began, calmly, to graze. Now and then he raised his head, looked again and went on grazing. It was almost like a conversation.

  It was a very strange thing. Even more remarkable when you realized that a buck that had lived so long in an area overrun yearly by hunters must be not only cleverer but also more wary than others of his kind. Was he unafraid now because he somehow sensed that James meant him no harm? Or had he, perhaps, always lived safely in this almost inaccessible valley and never needed to learn fear in order to survive?

  But, of course, the valley wasn’t really inaccessible. The western end of the small box canyon seemed to have been blocked off, probably centuries before, by a tremendous landslide, so that the only entrance was by way of the cliff above Peter’s Creek. But although the narrow path, high up on the cliff face, was dangerous, it was not impassable. Where James had come, others could come. And then, too, it seemed likely that the food supply in the small valley would be insufficient in the dead of winter. It seemed most probable that the deer came to the valley by way of the path at certain times, at the times perhaps when tourists and hunters invaded the mountains.

  There was no way of knowing for sure. What did seem true, however, was that this deer, James’ noble stag, was wiser and cleverer than others of his kind. Wise enough not only to have managed to stay alive for a long time, but also to know that James was a friend. The thought was suddenly and surprisingly eye-tingling and throat-tightening. James blinked, swallowed hard and said out loud, “You don’t have to worry about me, old man. I won’t betray you.” A little later, when he got to his feet, the stag raised its majestic head and watched with calm curiosity as James saluted, bowed, slid down off the boulder and headed for home.

  It was only ten or fifteen minutes later that James first saw Griffin Donahue. He had reached the highest point of the trail across the cliff face, a slightly wider spot where he usually stopped to catch his breath and enjoy the view, when he was suddenly aware of a strange sound. Looking down to the creek bed, he saw a mystifying sight. Someone was standing on a large rock at the edge of the water. He’d never before seen anyone on that stretch of the creek, a place where the water ran swiftly in a series of small waterfalls and then dropped in a long cascade to the lake below. At times the rushing water probably filled the entire gorge, but now, in the dry season, there was a narrow strip of boulder-strewn land on each side of the stream. It was a place where one might expect to see a determined fisherman or an adventurous hiker, but the person who stood on top of the large dome-shaped boulder obviously wasn’t in either category.

  Dressed in a long, close-fitting sheath that shimmered as if it were spun from silver thread, the person on the rock seemed strangely elongated, her body too narrow for its height. With her arms outspread, she was standing so perfectly still that for a moment James actually wondered if she were alive, or only some strange statue or mannequin. But then she moved, lifting her head and tilting it upward, so that her face was more clearly visible—eyes closed beneath dark, sharply defined brows, wide cheek bones and a full-lipped mouth. The mouth was closed and seemed to remain so, and yet the singing went on, a high, clear wailing chant. Frozen to the spot in amazement, James felt the hair on the back of his neck begin to prickle.

  Then suddenly, two more figures appeared from behind the boulder, and it all became, if not clear, at least explainable. It was some kind of game. Because these other two were obviously little kids, probably less than ten years old. They were p
lainly pretending to be involved in a ritual or ceremony of some sort. The first one, who seemed to be a boy, had a beach towel robe over his shoulders and was holding a large basket in front of him. The other was a little girl. James leaned forward, pushing his glasses back in place and squinting. The same girl, in fact, he had met in the grove near the west gate. The one who had helped him pick up groceries and who had said that her name was Laurel Jarrett. But now she was wearing something draped over her head and was carrying what seemed to be a large blue vase. The two kids walked in a circle and then approached the rounded rock where the silver figure still stood motionless. The mystery of the high-pitched chant was now solved. The kids’ mouths were opening and closing in time to the plaintive wail that had made the back of James’ neck begin to crawl.

  When they reached the rock, the silver woman knelt suddenly and took the basket from the boy. Then she rose and, reaching into the basket, seemed to be scattering something on the surface of the creek. She was singing now, too, her voice soaring over the children’s, a high, clear, floating sound. Kneeling again, she returned the basket to the boy and, taking the vase from the girl, poured something into the foaming water below the boulder. A moment later she slid down off the rock, and the three of them moved slowly, in single-file, toward the cliff. It wasn’t until then that James noticed the cavelike crevice in the cliff face. When they had disappeared into the crevice, he hurried on across the cliff and down the long incline to the Peter’s Creek crossing.